Tag: church

  • We are God’s temple

    The way we treat one another matters

    Saturday afternoon, I was reading in the Acts of the Apostles when a question hit me.

    In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. Acts 1:15-16 ESV

    What is the significance of 120? That number rang a bell with me.

    When King Solomon opened the new temple, it was accompanied by great ceremony, including…

    And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, without regard to their divisions, and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters; and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.2 Chronicles 5:11-15 ESV

    Jesus is the temple, but as His body, we form part of it. We no longer need to go to a special building to offer our sacrifices.

    The New Testament reinforces that idea elsewhere.

    The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. Revelation 3:12 ESV

    As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4-5 ESV

    Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16 ESV

    The fact that we belong to Jesus and, as His body, form part of God’s temple has profound implications for the way we treat other believers.

    Jesus said

    By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35 ESV

    When we are harsh or unforgiving toward believers, we defame the very temple of Christ. When we choose not to love other believers, we choose to turn our back on part of the temple.

    Ouch!

    I confess that as I typed that out, I realized that I had some repenting to do.  I can be critical and unloving toward other believers. I don’t like some believers for a variety of reasons, and I had to ask the Lord for forgiveness.

    As we learn to live with one another, to extend grace, forgiveness and love, let’s remember why we do it and give Him the glory.

    Kevin

    SUMMARY

    Reading about the 120 in Acts 1 led me to see that, as His body, we believers form part of God’s temple. That gives us every reason to extend grace, forgiveness and love to one another.

    TAKEAWAY

    You no longer need a special building to offer your sacrifices; as part of Christ’s body, you form part of His temple.

    Other believers form part of the temple too, so the way you treat them matters; your love for one another is how all people will know you are His disciples.

    As you learn to extend grace, forgiveness and love to other believers, remember why you do it and give Him the glory.

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  • Every Member Is Necessary — 1 Corinthians 12

    THE BODY NEEDS EVERY PART — INCLUDING YOURS

    I have a friend who has not been to church in three years. He has his reasons, and some of them are legitimate. He was hurt, and the people who hurt him should have known better. But somewhere along the way, staying home became a habit, and the habit became a conviction, and now he will tell you he does not need the church to follow Jesus.

    I love him. And I think he is wrong.

    Not because church attendance is a rule to follow. Because he is a member of a body that is missing a part, and so is he.

    Paul does not leave us much wiggle room on this. Just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12). He is not describing a meeting you go to. He is describing an organism you belong to. Those are not the same thing, and the difference matters more than we usually let ourselves admit.

    Here is the part that should stop you if you have ever felt like your contribution to the church was minor. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary (1 Corinthians 12:21-22). Not helpful. Not appreciated. Necessary. That is Paul’s word, not mine.

    If someone has told you, by their words or just by the way they treated you, that you do not have much to bring — that your gifts are small, your role is replaceable, your absence would barely be noticed — Scripture is flatly contradicting them. The parts that look weaker are the ones Paul calls necessary. The ones that feel least visible are not optional.

    But let me say the harder thing too.

    Some of us are physically present and functionally absent. We show up, we sit, we leave, and we have arranged things carefully so that nobody really needs us and we do not really need anybody. We have been hurt before, or we are private people, or we just never got around to going deeper, and now the habit of distance has hardened into something we have started calling preference.

    The body feels that absence too, even if nobody says so.

    God does not tend to grow us in the quiet of our own company. He grows us through each other. Through the person who says the thing we did not want to hear. Through the one whose need shows up at an inconvenient time and asks something of us we did not plan to give. Through the Sunday morning conversation that turns out to be exactly what we needed and had no idea we were walking toward.

    That is not an accident of community. That is the body working the way it was designed to work.

    If the church has wounded you, I am not asking you to pretend it did not happen. Wounds in the church are real, and they leave marks. But the answer to a broken expression of the body is not to live permanently outside the body. It is to find your place in it again, imperfect people and all, because imperfect people are the only kind there are, and God has chosen to do His work through them anyway.

    You are not a guest in this body. You are a member of it. And somewhere in it, there is a function that belongs specifically to you, that nobody else can fill in the same way, and that the rest of the body is waiting on whether they realize it yet or not.

    My friend knows all of this. We have talked about it more than once.

    I am still praying he comes back.

    Kevin

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    Some thoughts on finding a good church

    Find a good church

    Live in Abbotsford? There are many good churches. This is where I attend.